Update: Apparently, St. Patrick was actually Welsh. Or was it English? Ohhh... and then he was kidnapped by Irish pirates. But he later returned to England to marry Buttercup after many madcap adventures with a giant, a Spaniard and an angry little man with a lisp. Everybody clear? Good, good...

St. Pat may have been conservative, but he was still popular with the ladies (which was totally culturally acceptable at the time and palce). Also, dear old St. Pat was English too. *sigh* Not everyone's perfect.

Hey! I married an Irish guy. MY family has a cabin up north and when he visited for the first time, he noticed we had a horseshoe over the door for good luck. One of the first thing he did was to take the horseshoe down and rehang it so that it was upright, in the shape of a "U" (it had been hanging in an upside-down U shape). He said that in order for it to be good luck, it has to be hanging like a "U" so that the luck doesn't fall out! Maybe that's why the horseshoe is upside-down on the cake? Then again, we probably shouldn't give the wreckerator that much credit....

Actually St Patrick was Welsh, he went to Ireland to convert the heathens who had enslaved him when he was a boy. Irish pirates captured him. He escaped trained to be a priest here in South Wales at and recieved the command from God to go back to Ireland in a dream. He left from Whitesands Bay near St Davids (Britains smallest city) and wanted to stay in Wales as it was so lovely but God told him someone else was going to come after him who would be the patron of Wales. St David, (Dewi Sant in welsh) is the only native born of the four patrons of Great Britain. Patrick ,welsh for Ireland, Andrew Jewish for Scotland and George a Palestinian for England. My husbands family all come from Dewisland the area of Pembrokeshire he came from.

"Irist", you hand. We should join up! Maybe we'll "Get Lucky". "Kiss me...im IRISH". "Suck the Irish" has a 3 leaf clover left of "the". Decorator was a "prat"! Lump me in the "Big Whoop!" category though, I just want a cool sensation pattie!

Slightly Off-topic: I was at Costco yesterday, hovering around the baked goods. Happened to see a couple of sheet cakes with little carrots on them. Naturally, I thought that they'd look so much better with carrot jockeys on them. Poor little lonely carrot steeds!

Right now, the only thing I can focus on is that the second cookie was made almost a week ago. (close-up of sticker shows 3/11/10.)(!!)Likely good and sturdy by now, hmmm?I'd like to take the stupid thing, and give our pal Irist a good hard, stale whack upside the head.(Man! If "ignorance is bliss", there must be a LOT of *happy* cake decorators out there.)

The Big Whoop cake is actually a big whoopie pie! I lived in New England for a few years and these are quite a popular and delicious treat! It is a soft cookie sandwich with vanilla cream in the center. So it is one of their creative sayings when they say Big Whoop on a whoopie pie! Hope that helps clarify things a little!

Am I the only person who sees a bikini bottom instead of lips on that second cake? Someone already saw men's shorts in the "Suck of the Irish" -- does this say something about fans of Cake Wrecks, I wonder....

England (Im English) didnt exsist until several hundred years after Patrick lived, the land now known as England was divided into Mercia,Wessex etc until after alfred the great in the 9th century.Ther were no English until then either. We are a mongrol people a mixture of British (now called Welsh) Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Danes, Romans as well probably and English is a composite language made up of a bit of many of the above a a few others!and Patrick was probably celibate although it wasnt compulsory in the Celtic Church.

yeah as someone from New England, despite someone already correcting you I have to back that up the Big Whoop thing is a NE thing. And I feel bad for every single person who's never had a whoopie pie, seriously. Y'all are deprived.

Oh great! Now I have Princess bride running through my head! "As you wish!" "No more rhyms, now, I mean it!" "Anybody want a peanut?" "I'm not a witch I'm your wife!" "Bye-bye boys Have fun storming the castle! Think it will work? It would take a miracle!" "Inconceivable!" "You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means" "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father Prepare to die!" "It's not that bad . . . well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely." And soooo many more! Love that movie!

Any Irish person actually born in Ireland would probably have a right fit over that third cake. Orange icing? Blasphemy! Orange is the color of the Protestants, and St. PaDDy's Day (note the emphasis on the D's, Wreckerator #5) is strictly a Catholic holiday as symbolized by the color green.

If you know much Irish history, you know that "May the luck of the Irish be with you" is a curse. The Irish have had enough bad luck and misery for the whole world. The Great Hunger was only one example. So "Suck of the Irish" is not a bad assessment of the overall Irish experience with luck.

Thanks to Jen and my dictionary, I now know that "prat" does not mean what I thought it meant. Your prat is what you fall on when you take a pratfall.

The dark age or post Roman Celts are often refered to as Romano British as they clung to the civilsation and religion of the late empire but as most 'Romans' were not Italians or even from Rome itself, Padraig (Irish or Gaelic)In "The Life", Patrick is told of coming to Wales as a bishop and vowing to serve God at Glyn Rhosyn (now St. David's). But, he was warned in a dream that the place was reserved for someone who would arrive thirty years later. He was then shown Ireland in the distance by an angel as he stood on a rock called "the seat of St. Patrick." Patrick's mission was to evangelize the distant land, a task that he carried out in a remarkably short period.

The red dragon of Wales (Y Ddraig goch) goes back a long time, long before the Union Jack was ever put together. As a national symbol for Wales, it predates its adaptation by the Tudors. The dragon is perhaps the very first mythical beast in British heraldry. Legend has Macsen Wledig and his Romano-British soldiers carrying the red dragon (Draco) to Rome on their banners in the fourth century. It was adopted in the early fifth century by the Welsh kings of Aberffraw to symbolize their authority after the Roman withdrawal. By the seventh century, it was known as the Red Dragon of Cadwallader, forever after to be associated with the people of Wales. The ninth century historian Nennius mentions the red dragon in his Historia Brittonum and it was referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae written between 1120 and 1129.

Er, trek, have you been in Dublin for St. Paddy's recently? Today the gangs of drunk 13 year olds were roaming before the parade started at noon, and middle-aged men were vomiting outside the pubs by mid-afternoon. So it's definitely a day of drunken debauchery for some people. But a nice family day out for others, and a celebration of Irishness for others, and still a holy day of obligation for others!

And oh, so funny that someone had word verification of synge as in JM Synge, Irish playwright, of Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots when it opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907!

Is it just me, or have the comments on the Paddy's day cakes been even funnier than usual? (Not including mine.) Jen of course is spot on as always. Thanks for all the good laughs Jen!

I'm Australian, so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but we don't have these here so I will ask anyway...what the hell is a cookie cake??? I keep seeing cake wrecks here that claim to be cookie cakes... so what are they? Is it just an oversized cookie (ie flat) or is it the same size as a cake but made to look / taste like a cookie? Again, sorry for the stupid question, but it has been bugging me for weeks!

Hmm either I have a dirty mind or that cake doesn't say Luck of the Irish.. that capital L looks different to me lol. The first cake.. makes me wonder who would buy it and would they think they would actually get lucky? Hm many weird cakes this lovely day.

Don't forget the bit where St Pat became the Dwead Piwate Woberts. Oh and how he drove the R.O.U.Ses out of Ireland after dealing with the snakes. No more monkey-fighting R.O.U.Ses in Monday to Friday Ireland.

And I really pity those poor little leprechauns on the top cake that are about to get ingested by an amoeba.

Great post! As an Irish girl, I'm loving the American (mostly?) take on Paddy's day as demonstrated through that most expressive of media, cake. One of which is "Patty's Day" ha! Patty is a girl's name^_^ Can we instead celebrate the cultural icon that is Patty Bouvier on March 17th? Maybe people can go around painted yellow&wearing purple wigs?

That cake actually does say "Luck of the Irish" in perfectly acceptable cursive, at least it looks like it to me.The bottom of the letter has the little loop of a capital cursive L, the capital cursive S just has a curve. I'll admit that they can look similar, but that would only mean that I'm more likely to assume it's an L in this case.(http://www.identifont.com/samples/berthold/EnglSchreibschrift.gif)

Aaaarghh.... I hate it when poeple refer to St Patrick as St Patty!!!And he was niether Welsh nor English but came from the part of Britain which would later be called Wales. And he was my third auntie twice removed.

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